The four constituent parts of the United Kingdom are described as either "country" (England, Wales and Scotland) or "province" (Northern Ireland). Three other geopolitical terms are included in the standard and designated "nations" (formerly "included for completeness"):

United Kingdom (consisting of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales)

Each code consists of two parts, separated by a hyphen. The first part is GB, the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code of the United Kingdom. The second part is three letters, which is the British Standard BS 6879 three-letter code of the subdivision.

Though GB is the United Kingdom's ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code, UK is exceptionally reserved for the United Kingdom on the request of the country. Its main usage is the .uk internet ccTLD.

Contents

Subdivision names are listed as in the ISO 3166-2 standard published by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA).

BS 6879 gives alternative name forms in Welsh (cy) for some of the Welsh unitary authorities (together with alternative code elements). Since this part of ISO 3166 does not allow for duplicate coding of identical subdivisions, such alternative names in Welsh and code elements are shown for information purposes only in square brackets after the English name of the subdivision.

Wales was changed from being described as a principality to being described as a country in the December 2011 update to the standard. England and Scotland were maintained as country and Northern Ireland was maintained as province.[1]